New ‘Six Pack’ Switch Powers Facebook Data Center Fabric

In Facebook data centers, the meaning of the words “six pack” no longer has anything to do with beer or abs.

During the Networking @Scale event at its Menlo Park, California, headquarters Wednesday, the company’s infrastructure engineers unveiled a new element of the next-generation Facebook data center fabric. Called Six Pack, the networking switch uses its six hot-swappable modules to enable any piece of IT gear in the data center to talk to any other piece of IT gear.